


Feel The Earth Move When You Speak

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Lynes and Mathey Series - Amy Griswold & Melissa Scott
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Ghosts, M/M, Magic, Oxford, Victoriana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-02-28 20:37:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2746181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Lynes. Do you believe in ghosts?"</em>
</p><p>(He doesn't. But Ned might be losing any choice in the matter.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feel The Earth Move When You Speak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [st_aurafina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/gifts).



"Lynes. Do you believe in ghosts?”

It was ironic, Julian thought, or perhaps just unfortunate, that it was All Hallows Eve curving towards the horizon in these last days of September, and here was the Master in his cowl and hood looking a little like a Franciscan monk’s ghost Julian had heard tell of in the churchyard, as a child, and more than a little like an oversized crow. (“He cultivates it,” Ned had said, aged eighteen or thereabouts. “Likes to sweep through the quads like a visitation from, well. The other place.”)

Julian swallowed hard; it was early, and coffee had not been forthcoming. A problem of metaphysical correspondences in the Commons kitchen, or perhaps simply an artefact of a Sunday morning. “No, sir,” he said, after a moment. “I can’t say as I do.”

“Hold on to that belief, young man,” the Master said, over his spectacles, as though this were some long-ago tutorial, which Julian supposed was to be expected. The Master had insisted on meeting at the Commons, though Julian had no real claim to the place nowadays. You could take the student of metaphysics out of the man, but not on the Master’s watch. 

"Yes, sir."

The Master fixed him with a firm look. “Now, there’s also the matter of the young man’s disappearance.”

Julian nodded, running it quickly over in his mind – an undergraduate mantled by the name of Samuel Llewellyn Mansfield – a fine and upstanding young man, by all accounts, reading metaphysics, not seen by his friends and tutors for some days – while fighting a certain mental fog. _Coffee_ , for the love of all things – but those sorts of prayers weren't usually answered around here without greater clarity of metaphysical expression. “I understand.”

“You will take the case, of course?”

“Yes, sir.” There couldn’t be any other answer, not to the Master of one’s own college, and that too the very man himself, not having had the decency to retire and be replaced by some fresh-faced new incumbent in the years since one’s own departure. “Of course.”

“I look forward to seeing you in hall this evening,” the Master said, severely. “You’ll send a note of fees and expenses.”

“Yes, sir.” This time the response was automatic. Although – Julian paused – there was the usual other matter. “I’d like to bring a colleague along, if you’re amenable? The respected metaphysician, Edward Mathey – he's been of great assistance to me on other cases.”

“Very well.” The Master nodded, and they rose to the sound of distant bells, pealing matins across London. _Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's_ , sang a voice in Julian’s head. He hadn’t slept well, clearly. “Until tonight, Lynes.”

Julian watched the Master stride across the Commons courtyard, expertly avoiding the trailing vines sneaking out hopefully towards him, and stuffed his own hands in his pockets, whistling in an ungentlemanly fashion. The good mood was nothing but the sun, he decided after a moment: just the fresh crisp light, and the promise of a new case. Nothing but, but enough, and he wended his way home taking a roundabout route, buying roasted chestnuts from a boy hawking them on the Euston Road, and reaching his own lodgings with the warmth rising in his cheeks.

“Arise, arise,” he called out, a little louder than strictly necessary, wafting the roast chestnuts with determination, while the respected metaphysician Edward Mathey pulled the bedcovers up so only his eyes were visible. “Up and at ‘em, Ned, we’ve got a case.”

Ned sneezed. “Lynes, leave your wreath and let me die in peace.”

“Melodrama, Ned.” Julian threw open the curtains, letting the sounds of the city in, then undermined himself somewhat by throwing off his coat, hat and boots and clambering under the covers with Ned. It was still early, the light in the room crisp and new-minted; Julian had seen Mrs Digby on her way to church as he let himself in. "I brought you breakfast."

He cracked one of the chestnuts and put the flesh of it directly into Ned's mouth, his fingers emerging warm and wet. Ned laughed and bit down, his good humour at least a little restored. To be fair to him, Julian thought, Ned had struggled through a week's hacking cough on the promise of a restorative Sunday with no metaphysics at all. Mrs Clewett had clucked; Julian had prescribed whisky; Ned had merely glared and spent most of his non-working hours asleep in his armchair, and had had to be untwined more than once from the loving embrace of _Urtica mordax_. It had been trying.

"What's it about, then?" Ned asked, presently, now cracking nuts with precious little regard for broken shell pieces between the sheets. Julian looked above his head for the moment, through the glass at the brilliant powder-blue sky. Contentment came to them in this life, but perhaps, not often enough.

"Do you think," he said, after a minute, "you can get yourself out of bed and dressed and decently subfusc in time for the three fifteen from Paddington?"

"Subfusc?" Ned inclined his head. "Oxford?"

"The Master expects us both to attend formal hall this evening," Julian said, blandly anticipating the twist in Ned's expression. "I can run back down to the Commons if you like, let your Miss Frost know you'll be away from town for a day or two."

"I like," Ned said, fussily destroying a chestnut shell, "that you just assume I'm coming with you."

Julian got out of the bed, brushing himself down, feeling the loss of Ned's body heat in the chill of the room. "Aren't you?" he asked, mildly.

Ned gave him a look. "If you're going back to the Commons, you may as well get some of my books. And you can write the note for Miss Frost, it's not as though I have any notion of what it is that's taking me to Oxford."

"A missing man and a pack of ghosts." Julian laughed and ruffled his hair. "Floreat domus, Ned!"

Ned threw a chestnut at him, which Julian caught neatly, and munched on happily all the way out into the bright fresh air.

*

Oxford was greyer than London, the sky washed out with autumn and the light high above the clouds. Ned had dozed most of the way up, rocking with the motion of the railway carriage, dimly aware of Julian's presence beside him, but when they disembarked at Oxford station he was alert and restless, something awakening in him. Julian seemed to understand; at any rate he made a gesture past the line of cabs towards the street. "Shall we walk up?" he asked, and Ned nodded gratefully and followed him, huddling into his coat. As they crossed St Giles the church bells were ringing at Mary Magdalene, and something made Ned pause and exhale, as though letting the last of the London air out of his lungs. 

"After you," Julian said, gesturing at the rows of enchanted lights lining the porters’ lodge, and Ned smiled at the vividness of memory. He pushed open the small cut-out door, jumped inside, and then stepped back in alarm as something – someone – almost thudded into his knees, then moved back from him with a small cry. 

"Mathey and Lynes," Julian was saying from behind Ned, to the porter, "yes, the Master asked if we might attend…"

"Hello," Ned said, getting down on one knee to be at eye-level with his interlocutor. "You should watch your step."

The little girl – around four or five, Ned guessed, and a quick glance around did not reveal any nearby mother or nurse – paused a moment, as though to get the measure of him, and then launched into a sweet-pitched babble it took Ned a few moments to begin to parse. "Plus lentement, ma petite," he said, and over his shoulder to Julian, "My French is fit for purpose, if the purpose is reading journals of metaphysics from the Continent…"

Julian said, "Yes. A detective and a metaphysician, we're expected. Thank you. Ned, who's your friend?"

"I don't know," Ned said, looking at the girl's ragged dress and bare feet, and then uneasily at the swiftly blackening sky. "Little one" – this in English – "I think it would be best if I…"

He reached out. The Master emerged, hooded, from behind the archway and said, "I see you've discovered our little problem" – and Ned's arms closed on nothing. 

"Oh," he said, completely unable to stop the shiver passing through his body. The little girl had vanished without trace. The porter was looking at him with a stoic lack of expression; the Master with some amusement; Julian with veiled concern. "What – what was that?"

Before there could be any answer, another figure appeared in the archway, gasping for breath that showed as white steam in the warmth of the lodge. "Master," he said, looking for only a moment at Ned and Julian, "we've found him."

Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel, crossing the front quadrangle with an alarming swiftness. With a glance at Julian, Ned followed, the two of them keeping pace across hoar-frosted grass and bare flowerbeds. They emerged into the garden quad and kept on going, along a side-passage and then down a set of stairs that seemed, at first sight, to descend into the bowels of the earth.

"Mansfield," Julian was saying, turning over his shoulder to the Master – who was following at a respectable pace for a man his age – "the undergraduate, the man who was missing…"

"Not missing," said the man in front, and finally came to a halt in front of a wooden door with a number of forbidding signs stuck to it with drawing pins. "You'll be the detectives, I presume?"

"Dr Ashburnham is the young man's tutor," the Master said, but Ashburnham was shaking his head.

"I was," he said, with heaviness in his tones, and pushed open the door. Something small flashed past – a little tabby cat, shooting through Julian's legs in her anxiety to be elsewhere – and then Ned was coughing from the fumes, thick and low-lying. In the murk he could make out a shadow of something, a human figure hideously drooped and slipping to the floor.

"In then out," Julian said, low in Ned's ear, and they pushed their way past Ashburnham and took in the sight of a cluttered but clinical-looking room – rather like the bare metaphysics labs at the Commons, with non-conforming protective magic scrawled on the walls, a great number of texts scattered on the floor, a discarded wand, a square of Saturn partly drawn on a scrap of paper, and a number of other workings half-done then scribbled out – and its sole occupant, a young man with a strange cherry-red aspect to his cheeks, so he might have been thought to have been among the living. Julian placed two fingers in the hollow in the man's neck and shook his head; Ned was coughing too much to speak. 

Outside the room, the draught of clean air was a blessing. Ashburnham and the Master both stood expectant for a moment, and when Julian shook his head again, both slumped visibly. "Coal-gas in the room, I think," Julian said. "It's had quite some time to accumulate, too. Nothing more we can do for him now."

"In that case," the Master said, gently, "we'll have the room aired, and come for the boy in the morning. Dr Ashburnham, I think you could use something to drink. I know I could."

He gestured, making it clear it was an open invitation; Julian held out a hand to Ned, who had sunk to his knees against the wall, still coughing raggedly. "You're all right, Ned," he murmured, _sotto voce_ , and it was easier, Ned was thinking, to tell a man he was fine than ask him, but he took the helping hand Julian offered, and followed him upstairs.

*

In the buttery, Julian put a tin mug of hot spiced wine in front of Ned before drinking deeply from his own. Ned caught his eye for a moment and then looked out across the room; without hearing him say it, Julian knew he was thinking about how little this old, warm, fire-lit space had changed. Pausing a moment, he fetched two more mugs, and the Master smiled as Julian took his seat.

"Thank you. Mathey, it's a pleasure to see you again. I must confess, sir, that when Lynes mentioned his respected metaphysician, it took me some little time, to, ah, connect your name…"

Ned smiled, and Julian supposed it was more pleasing than the reverse to think of oneself as an eternal undergraduate somewhere, even if only in one's old tutor's mind. "I suppose," Ned said carefully, "that our arrival is now somewhat superfluous?"

Ashburnham nodded his head; he too, seemed to be recovering through the application of alcohol. "Mansfield hadn't been seen in a number of days," he said. "He had remained in residence since Trinity."

"Long time to stay," Julian commented.

"His people are out in India, I believe," the Master said. "I'll inquire where the telegram will have to be sent, but I understand it's somewhere near Darjeeling. Mansfield had been working alongside Dr Ashburnham on his metaphysical research. I thought there was no need to involve the police, but if he really had disappeared…"

Julian nodded. "I suppose the coal-gas wasn't noticeable at first," he said. "Then by the time it filled the laboratory and the smell was present, he had been overcome by fumes."

"A terrible business," Ashburnham said, lifting his mug. "I'm truly sorry to have taken up your time, but…"

"Wait," Ned said, very softly, holding up a hand. Julian turned to him with some surprise. "Before we lay to rest this mystery. What happened to me in the lodge?"

"Ah," the Master said, with some warmth. "Perhaps you can tell me, Mr Mathey" – and Julian resisted a smile at how Ned responded, sitting up with his hands clasped, in perfect echo of the excellent student he had been. "Was it a ghost, as I somewhat facetiously suggested to your colleague here?"

"A figment," Ned said, and leaned back in his chair. "A figment is" – he paused – "an echo. A shadow that appears when an enchantment fails to take. None of this restless spirit nonsense."

"Quite," the Master said. "Balliol is currently playing host to a number of them. The porters have reported gentlemen seeking entrance wearing the fashions of ten, twenty, fifty years ago."

"But a little girl?" Julian asked, shaking his head. "Speaking French?"

"Balliol," the Master said delicately, "is of ancient foundation" – and Ned nodded.

"Not French," he said, "or at least, if it was, then Norman French."

"Just so," the Master said. "She was the first, but others have followed, and the timing was such, with Mansfield's disappearance, that we had reason to believe the two might be connected. But if it were merely a death by misadventure…" 

Julian nodded. "Still and all," he said, his eyes on Ned, "what causes the figments?" 

"They occur when a mistake is made," Ned said. " A true metaphysical working is written, and so _is_ ; they are shadows of what has been, and what might be. But there are metaphysicians enough here to resolve the matter, I'm sure."

"Metaphysicians there are," the Master said, with uncharacteristic tentativeness, "but nevertheless, Mathey, I would beg an indulgence from you before you retire for the night. The boy" – and that was the tragedy of the thing, Julian was thinking; the young man Mansfield, all potentiality taken from him, returned to _boy_ – "will need… the appropriate arrangements. And while we could advise the proper authorities, the hour is late."

"I'll take care of it, sir," Ned said, and Julian bit down another deeply inappropriate smile. Metaphysicians there were, but only Ned, the practitioner, who had ever prepared a body for burial. 

Back in that dark room beneath the buttery, the air smelled clean and neither of them began coughing, but still Julian enchanted the lights, not daring risk the gas. 

"I suppose," Ned said, rummaging in his metaphysician's bag, "we return to London in the morning." 

Julian shook his head. “Ned,” he said, after a moment, “think about this like a detective, not a metaphysician. Mansfield disappeared around the time the figments first manifested. And then we found him: surrounded by the things of metaphysics – his wand, his papers, his textbooks, his half-written sigils. But he died of _coal-gas poisoning_? Does that sound plausible to you?"

"It doesn’t have to sound plausible," Ned said, "if it's what happened."

Julian shook his head again. "And what work must needs be done, in secret, in a laboratory underground, such that it took days for his death to be discovered? And if there really is no connection, why _are_ there ghosts walking in a respectable Oxford college? Occam's razor comes to mind."

Ned was looking thoughtful. "I suppose," he said at last, "it would do no harm to find out exactly what Mansfield was working on with Ashburnham. I could make enquiries."

"Thank you, my dear," Julian told him, and smiled at Ned's disarmed look, and the second he took to collect himself.

"May I borrow your handkerchief, please?" Ned asked, and Julian handed it over without comment. Ned covered his head and did the work quickly and efficiently, and although he was certainly practised enough to do the thing without words, he spoke them aloud regardless, so Julian was soothed by his voice, soft in the dimness, holding away rot, corruption, and ghosts.

*

"Move," Ashburnham was saying, gesturing with one hand in the air as Julian drew closer, "time. Use the square of Saturn, it's appropriate in this instance."

"Move time," Ned said, standing up, and he was gesturing too, more slowly, with a look of fierce concentration, before his hands dropped to his sides and he smiled. "Good morning, Julian."

There was an edge of mockery in the greeting. Julian had half-expected to lie awake all night, waiting for spectres on the stair, but he had slept heavily and dreamlessly, through the sequence of bells across the city that had once been as familiar as breathing, and missed breakfast. "Good morning," he said, primly, and Ashburnham nodded politely at him.

"If that's all, Mathey," he said, after a moment, glancing at his watch, "I have some correspondence I must deal with this morning."

"Yes, thank you," Ned said. "I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me."

Ashburnham nodded again and set off across the garden, his footsteps leaving prints in the last of the dew on the grass. It was another bright day, more autumn than winter, with watery but earnest sunlight filtering through the trees. As Julian sat down beside him on the bench, he remembered that Ned was disposed to both rising with the skylarks and a certain loving-kindness; he passed Julian two purloined rolls stuffed with cheese without any remark. 

"You can tell your Miss Frost," Julian said, taking a grateful bite, "that there's good news to come."

"Time and movement," Ned said, thoughtfully, as Ashburnham disappeared from sight into the chapel passageway. "That's what Ashburnham was working on with Mansfield. Rather an arcane field, I would have thought, though there have been developments on the Continent just recently. Nothing to explain what happened in the lab. What's the good news to come?"

"When Balliol has been persuaded to train women as metaphysicians," Julian said, thoughtfully, "surely the Commons will be compelled to accommodate their subsequent membership."

"Balliol?" Ned repeated, and his expression cleared of confusion, but kept an attitude of wonder. "You mean – you saw them?"

Julian smiled. "As I was walking up here, yes. Young women in gown and ribbon, taking tea on the lawn. I think I counted three before they disappeared back into the aether."

"How did you know they were metaphysicians?" Ned asked, and then answered his own question, lifting the red trim on his own subfusc. "How extraordinary. I certainly shall tell Miss Frost. And then, I suppose, be asked if the ghosts couldn't be persuaded to carry a convenient newspaper, with the date clearly visible front and centre."

Julian laughed and leaned back on the bench, heedless of any dew that might have remained on the beams. For a minute, they were silent, Julian watching as Ned sketched out a sequence of sigils on the paper in his hand, a little malformed through nothing to lean on but with Ned's characteristic clarity of style. Julian looked on as the square of Saturn took shape – he had no doubt the elements of it were held clear within Ned's mind, but it was good form to write it out – and smiled as he parsed the elements. "Ned, you're playing."

"I am not," Ned said, crossly, not looking up, and drew the last sigil. The tree above them drooped as though in a sough of wind, despite the stillness of the day, and then leaves were falling: first orange off the tree, then brown and silver with a tracery of ice, and then only ice, patterns perfect as snowflakes, and then only snow. Julian picked a leaf from Ned's hair and merely looked at him.

"All right," Ned said, ruefully, after a moment, "Perhaps I am a little. I read the form of grammar in one of my European journals and Ashburnham reminded me. Just hadn't had the time to try it."

"It's nice," Julian said, "to see you like this again."

"Like what?" Ned picked up the edge of his commoners' gown; practising metaphysicians wore them as a badge of honour, though they were entitled to the scholars'. "Like this?"

"Yes," Julian said, although that wasn't the whole of it. Perhaps it was just the immediacy of the memory: of afternoons he’d spent like this, quiet and easy, reading on the grass while Ned worked through a problem set, scouring his cuffs clean and raising delicate springs of water in the flowerbeds.

Ned murmured under his breath, and Julian felt it as Ned pulled out the elements and destroyed the enchantment. Again, he used the full forms of each letter, and Julian thought perhaps that was it: in London, it was easy to miss Ned’s pleasure in his work, occluded by household charms, bespelled corpses, and the London habit – and Julian’s own habit, particularly – of crabbed and abbreviated workings, drilled down to the ugly essentials. There was a greater peace to Ned, here.

And a corresponding unease in himself, although Julian didn’t follow that line of thought. "The Master," he said, after a minute, "says that he trusts our judgement in continuing the investigation. If we keep an eye to the passage of time." 

Ned nodded. "Do what you must, but begone before Michaelmas begins."

"Precisely. If you've spoken to Ashburnham…" Julian paused. "What do you say we take a look at Mansfield's rooms? I suppose the keys will be with his things, or in his pocket…"

"The porters will have a spare set," Ned said, hastily, reading Julian's mind; after Ned had bespelled it against decay, Mansfield's body had been carefully removed to lie in an alcove in the chapel, pending any word from the boy's family about where he should be interred. "Rather than pickpocket the dead, why don't you go and ask them?"

When Julian stood up to do just that, Ned was working quickly with his last scrap of paper; Julian understood what was happening, the confidence in those movements now being repeated, but not soon enough to escape another handful of snow down his neck.

*

The porters' instructions led them to another narrow staircase, climbing into the eaves in a spiral like a vine about a tree. Julian was saying, "Ned, wasn't this your first-year" – when he bumped his head on the roof in a smash of familiarity.

"Yes," Ned said, ducking by instinct a moment later, "it was."

"I wonder," Julian said, his feet echoing hollowly on the boards, raising a cloud – the undergraduates would not return until the week following, and the dust had had months to collect in these twisted rafters – "if it's of significance. That you lived here, and" – he pushed open the door – "Jesus Christ, Mathey."

Ned turned sharply. "What did I – oh." 

"Oh," Julian echoed, softly, and pushed the door again so it swung gently closed on them. On them, and on Ned, who would have been aged – and Julian could remember everything about that moment, every detail burned into his memory with metaphysical clarity –nineteen. Nineteen, with soft curls skimming the edge of his collar, on his knees, eyes alight with mischief, his hands going for trouser buttons and his mouth open. Somewhere in that shared past Julian's eyes closed with pleasure, and in the present-day dust of the room he stepped back and stepped back, until he came to rest hard against the wall. 

"Julian," said the voice from beside him, quietly, and Julian turned to Ned aged seven-and-twenty, standing by the doorway with an odd expression on his face, somewhere between embarrassment and amusement. "It's – the intensity of the emotion." He shrugged; he was blushing. "Combined with the spell. Like a – a phonograph recording, I suppose."

"Oh," Julian said, a little faintly, and when he turned back, they were alone in the room. Ned shrugged again and held out his hands in supplication; Julian smiled back, and was brought short by a thought like cold water. "Ned. Can anyone else – might someone have seen…"

"I suspect not," Ned said, moving forwards to investigate the space. To do so he had to get down on his knees on the floorboards, and Julian pushed away some inconvenient thoughts – _let the man do his job, Lynes_ – and then, that was a pleasure of a different sort, watching Ned draw a practitioner's circle around himself with just a fingertip in the dust. "Yes," he reported, looking up at Julian. "I believe our perceptions – that is, yours and mine" – a brief smile – "are heightened with respect to, er. That."

"That's something," Julian said, sitting down on the edge of the narrow bed. The give of the wood beneath his weight triggered another sense memory and he pushed it away, looking up at the room. He suspected Mansfield had brought little with him from India or else was just spartan in his habits: there was little to distinguish the room from any of the vacant ones along the corridor. There were some books: a handful of light novels, some standard metaphysical texts, volumes of Tacitus and Pliny the Elder; some shirts hanging in the wardrobe; a few discarded leaves of paper; a shaving kit; and very little else. The room smelled of dust. In Julian's insistent memory, it ought to smell of new-mown grass, and willow.

"Actually…" Ned paused, drew a sigil quickly in the dust, then erased it with the heel of his hand. "Bring light," he murmured, and Julian watched in pleased anticipation for the ripple of light across Ned's face. "Yes. My perceptions, particularly, because of my training."

"We're both trained metaphysicians," Julian pointed out, and Ned looked at him with a small, awkward smile.

"Ah, but I…"

Julian waved him silent, understanding. "You're doing it by hand," he said, with some admiration, and Ned gave him another awkward smile, gesturing to his wand lying unused by the door.

"I believe," he said, getting unsteadily to his feet, "there's enough of me in this particular figment already, without adding any more" – and Julian laughed and helped him up.

"You should stop giving away your breakfast," he said, "if you want to do so much magic in one morning" – and Ned laughed in return, and put a hand on his shoulder. 

"There's nothing here," he said, gesturing at the bare room, "shall we go on?" 

And it would have been one of those rare moments of contentment, Julian thought, if it had not been the moment they heard the crash from outside.

*

By the time they skidded through the side door of the college, the mess on St Giles was being attended to by the local constabulary. A coachman with a squashed hat was having brandy administered, and a horse was being led away from the smashed traces, talked to all the while in the chief porter's best soothing tones. As Ned and Julian walked through the arch a small grey and white cat scurried past, evidently hoping for freedom; the Master stepped out smartly from the shadows, scooped her up and put her firmly back inside. "There, there, Elijah," he said, absently, "or perhaps Isaiah, the porters do name them with all regard for piety and none for sex."

"What happened?" Ned asked, stepping outside to take in the battered lamp-post, the broken wood pieces obstructing the roadway, and the wheels and other remains of what had been a light open carriage. 

"I think I can guess," said Julian grimly, even as the coachman put down the brandy bottle, pushed away the constable, removed his misshapen hat and said, a little haphazardly: 

"The girl, did I hit her, where's the girl?"

"Ah," Julian said, stepping forwards in tandem with the chief porter. "Sir, what do you know about metaphysics?"

Ned thought it best not to interfere; the coachman was looking dubious. As Julian spoke about _metaphysical accidents_ and _figments_ and, finally, with some prompting from the chief porter, _appropriate recompense_ , Ned found himself being gestured a few steps backwards by the Master, to the recess behind the door so they were shielded somewhat from the street noise. 

"If Balliol's ghosts are spreading beyond the college boundaries," the Master said confidentially, "then we must act quickly. Not least because of the scope for such things as this." He gestured, and Ned could picture how it had happened so clearly – the figment, the small girl who had lived on this spot some seven hundred years previously, the frightened horse and driver. "I take it you and Lynes investigated Mansfield's effects? Did you find anything?"

Ned shook his head. "No, sir. I spoke to Dr Ashburnham about Mansfield's research, and…"

"It was rather esoteric, I'm afraid," Ashburnham said, walking through from the garden. "Oh, my, what happened here?"

"The ghosts are spreading," Ned said, and noticed that that they had all come to the word, gradually; neither the Master nor Ashburnham corrected him with 'figments'. "I think, sir," he said, carefully to the Master, "that if we are to avoid further accidents, the only remaining course of action will be to complete the enchantment."

"That's an exceptionally unwise idea," Ashburnham said, with unexpected determination. "Without knowledge – without adequate preparation – well. It might lead to your death, as it led to Mansfield's."

"With all due respect," Ned said, "I believe I can learn from his mistakes."

Ashburnham looked like he wanted to add something else, but the Master held up a hand, silencing him. "Do you know," he asked, "what it was he was trying to do?"

Ned shook his head again. "I mean to find out."

The Master considered him for a few moments. "I understand your reasoning," he said, at least, "but I don't like it."

Ned smiled slightly. "I don't believe you will be the only one to hold that opinion, sir."

*

"Ned," Julian was saying, "you can't possibly do this."

It wasn't strictly metaphysically necessary, but the porters had brought out a tin bucket of embers, glowing red in the dim winter light. Ned, sitting cross-legged on the ground and chalking a circle on the cobbles, wasn't surprised at the retinue of cats it had acquired, curled and purring in the pool of heat beneath. He reached out and scratched behind the ears of the nearest one; it lifted its head and yawned hugely at him.

"Ned!" Julian said, stamping his feet to keep warm. "Are you listening to me?"

"Yes," Ned said, mildly. "Is this one Samuel, do you think? Or Ezekiel?"

"Please," Julian said, and Ned looked up.

"It's the only way," he said, patiently. "You said it before, yourself – think about Occam's razor. If I can – finish the enchantment, then…" He gestured. "Then at least the ghosts will begin to fade. Before Michaelmas, and all."

"But you don't even know what he was trying to do!" Julian burst out, now pacing an irregular circle around the bucket and cracking the frost on the grass beneath his feet. "And if you think you can reconstruct it from his notes, that's one thing, but to trust your life…"

Ned spread his palms. "I will do my best, but more to the point: I'm not alone, and I'm not in an enclosed space. We're doing this in the middle of the quad, in the open air."

"Ned, Mansfield _died_."

"That coachman could have," Ned countered. "It's only luck he didn't take the lamp crossbar through his skull when he swerved."

Julian said nothing, and carried on pacing, up and down, up and down, while Ned sketched out a square of the sun, in line with the half-drawn one in Mansfield's notes. It was not quite accurate, which Ned suspected was meaningful, in its way – it might indicate the point where the coal-gas had begun to gather. When he lifted his pencil from the page Julian was standing over him, with an expression somewhere between resignation and frustration. 

"I suppose I can't stop you," he said, at length; Ned only shook his head. When Julian said nothing more for the moment, Ned finished the square of the sun and began on a square of Saturn, and when that was done, he looked up again.

"Be careful," Julian said, and Ned nodded, then thought better of it.

"I will," he said, as a promise, spoken out loud to comfort, and spread his papers across the circle chalked on the cobbles. The ground was dry and clean, and he clicked his tongue to hold off the cats. "It's interesting," he said, after a while. "The enchantment is, grammatically, in the first person; it has Mansfield himself marked up as the subject."

"Really?" Julian said, looking hopeful. "That means it won't work for you even if you do complete it successfully, isn't that right?"

"I could try to amend it," Ned said, chewing his pencil, thinking. He sketched out a few words, then began again. Smiling at the incongruity of it, he wrote 'Ned' in the metaphysical alphabet, as though he were thirteen again and learning the letters for the first time. 

"Lots of people called Ned," Julian commented, apparently interested in the solution in spite of himself. "Are you sure it'll take?"

"There's probably more than one metaphysician out there named Edward Mathey, as well," Ned pointed out. "It's the intention that will do it. That's why you can use your" – he mimed a sigil in the air, cramped and tiny – "little squiggles."

"Little squiggles." Julian snorted. "It works, doesn't it?"

"So will this," Ned said, confidently, picked up his pencil again and then laid it down. Using his hands, he started to put the first elements into the spell, building something tight and compact, with power beginning to gather between the layers. "It interacts oddly," he said, and rotated his reference page so Julian could see it. "You see? There is an unpredictable synthesis of grammatical elements between the layers. Like a garden gate that's been repaired a half-dozen times."

"I don't like this, Ned," Julian said, warningly, but Ned had begun the thing: he could work through it quickly now, aware dimly that words were fitting in their places with a little less than conscious effort from him; like a sequence of pre-cut shapes falling into waiting slots. The last sigil was a strange one, twisted and eccentric, requiring him to turn over one hand and not the other, and notice, as though from a great distance, the ice forming behind his fingernails. Afterwards, it would be the contrast of that moment that stayed in his memory: the ice, and something like fire, sustained by the air around him like luminiferous aether.

"Ned!" Julian yelled, and through the white translucency of flame, Ned saw everything slowed-down, as though Julian were moving through treacle: he saw Julian reach into a flowerbed and pick up a rock to throw, each moment stretching into a minute so when the rock hit the tin bucket it rang out sonorous as a clarion call; there was a triple screech and hiss, a clatter of claws on cobbles as three cats fled from the sound; and then something cracked and fire tore across his vision, and then everything was black.

Ned opened his eyes.

"What happened?"

"Ned," Julian said, very gently, "look up" – and Ned sat up and rubbed his eyes, and looked at the petrified remains of the tree that had been above his head, dead as though struck by lightning; at the grass turned to dust and nothingness; at the bare earth around him in a perfect circle. With a sharp intake of breath he looked under the brazier for the tiny skeletons, but saw nothing.

"You saved the cats," he said, quietly. 

"All but a bit of one," Julian said, on his knees beside him, his hands perilously close to Ned's hair, "but he'll be fine, he'll have cousins on the Isle of Man, I've seen 'em…

Ned laughed, out of relief, and a little hysteria, and abruptly realised he was covered in snow. 

"Your own blizzard," Julian told him, with that same brittle edge of almost-laughter, and Ned turned over his palms and watched the ice melt into the cracks. 

"We need to find the Master," he said, "and Ashburnham too. Now."

On the way to the Master's lodgings the chapel bells began to ring, stately and solemn, and Ned stopped moving as he crossed the ivy under the passageway and looked through to the stone alcove where Mansfield's body had been laid. "Ned," Julian called from out in the daylight, as he became aware Ned was no longer matching his pace, "are you, should I…"

"Go," Ned said, leaning against the wall with his hands on his knees. "I'll come along in a moment. You go and find them."

Julian started towards him regardless, hands outstretched, and Ned held still, afraid of that desperate affection so vivid in him, here in this open space where anyone might see – but Julian nodded and halted, and turned towards the garden path with determination in his stride. Ned breathed, and kept his head down, and breathed, thinking vaguely to himself that it would be distinctly unhelpful if he took another coughing fit at this moment. Inside the chapel, lights moved to and fro, and after a few minutes, almost unconscious of his own movements, Ned stood up and walked inside. It had occurred to him, belatedly, that metaphysically speaking he had been drafted within a new definition; that there might be something of Mansfield, however slight, still alive in him, and that he was, himself, still living. The air within the chapel was thick with the sweetness of old incense; Ned watched the chaplain cross the floor, back and forth with cassock and candle as the light failed, and kept on breathing.

"Ned," Julian called, and Ned turned his head, but did not see him; the voice was coming from beyond the chapel passageway in the fading daylight, out beneath the ivy. 

"Julian?" he said, and saw nothing for a moment. "I thought you – I'll come along in a moment."

"Ned?" Julian said again, and Ned was thinking now that there was something strange about his voice: strange perhaps in a metaphysical sense, so anyone but Ned, who had lived with him for half a lifetime, wouldn't feel it as a wrongness within his own skin. "Is that you?"

"I'm here," Ned said, softly, "Julian, it's me, I'm here" - but Julian was stepping through that archway, wearing a gown he had not been, a minute earlier; and he was not looking at Ned, but through him.

"Ned," he said again, "Ned, you're all right."

 _Easier to tell a man he's fine than ask him_. Ned turned to meet his own eyes. The ghost had a cane, and grey dust on his boots and in his hair, and rolled-up sleeves - with sigils carved in black ink directly on the skin; Ned shuddered involuntarily at those marks - but there was a slight smile in his face, a sharpness that softened at Julian's voice. "I'm not," he said, and Ned could hear himself, and not; there was more grit and smoke in that voice than he had yet heard. "But perhaps, someday..."

"You did your job," Julian said, "you did what you..."

"What I had to do. For the good of King and country. " There was a note of bitterness in that, but he held out an arm and let Julian help him along, and Ned shuddered again – feeling it in his bones, cold like bones breaking – as they passed through him. "O hear me," he said, wonderingly, to the roof, "be this a true image of my enemy, O Lord, and may your judgement fall upon him."

At eighteen, Ned had laughed at the Old Testament melodrama of that, and other curses like that, spoken here in this college of rationalists and prophet-cats; now he was shivering at the maledictor soft from his mouth. Julian said, steadfast, "You're all right, Ned" – and they disappeared in the clear daylight, so Ned was alone in the chapel passageway, looking across at the red flowers lining the paths into the garden, and at the sunset staining the grass like blood.

*

Julian had found the Master about to take tea in his study, as night fell beyond the windows; he sent for Ashburnham, and that gentleman followed on Ned's heels into the room, settling into an armchair with some semblance of ease, though with tension around his eyes. 

Ned did not sit down. "If I wanted to kill a man by metaphysics," he was saying, and Julian had noticed that he did not seem at all like the student he had been, pacing up and down the rug that took up much of the floor in the Master's study. "Well, perhaps I had better not. It's just as quick and easy to take a revolver, or a knife, and do it that way – because by way of metaphysics, the energy must come from somewhere. To end a life could take more than I could afford to lose."

While Ned paused, no one else spoke; Julian did not suppose the explanation represented knowledge new to anyone, and they stayed silent, waiting. Although it was his own room, the Master had chosen to stand, himself, a teacup with no saucer held delicately in his outstretched hand. 

"Of course if I were really set upon the thing, I could enchant a candlestick to land on his head." Ned gave Julian a quick, sharp-edged smile. "To really kill by metaphysics, precisely, without excess energy expended, using conforming magic – that's something that remains outside the ambit of conventional practice.

"Until now."

Julian looked up. The Master was leaning against the door, eyes intent. Only Ashburnham reacted immediately, his shoulders raised and his hands up. "Do you propose some basis for that remark, Mathey?" he asked, and Ned seemed unperturbed.

"Yes," he said, with another glance at Julian. "Perhaps, rather than bring a life to an abrupt and unnatural end, I let it come to its preordained close. Just – sooner. Sixty years in a day, or a moment. But perhaps I would need to test the method. On the leaves, turning them to ice before their time. Or on a little tabby cat." 

"Oh," Julian said, a little stupidly, remembering the flash of fur past his feet.

"Time, and movement," Ned said, turning over his palms again. "Academic esoterica. I don't know the rest of it. Was Mansfield just a reader? Did he come across the idea in a journal, as I did? Did he see some interesting feature of the method and think he could make a better fist of it? And" – Ned paused a moment – "was the experiment intended to have a subject?"

Julian hoped so: that the little cat had been a visitor, attracted by the warmth, and not – such a small, parsimonious hope, Julian thought – sought, and found, and carried hissing into that laboratory beneath the earth. 

"In any case," Ned said, "perhaps he was on a frolic of his own. I can't presume to say otherwise."

The Master straightened, brushing an invisible crumb from his gown. "Those laboratories," he said, after a moment, "may only be accessed with the permission and assistance of the fellows."

And then for the next moment, there was silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock, and the crackling of the fire. 

"It was at the behest of the War Office," Ashburnham said suddenly, voice flat. Ned took a step back, his hands clasped behind him. "In the spring of this year, I was contacted by a gentleman at the Horseguards in connection with a – perceived threat, across the Channel."

"A perceived threat," the Master repeated. "Of war?"

"Of new weapons of war, should that war ever come." Ashburnham was still expressionless. "I went to London to meet with the gentleman in question, and returned to Oxford in time for full term."

"What did they offer you?" Julian snapped out, when it became clear Ned would not.

Ashburnham glanced at him, then away. "I received some small monies," he said, carelessly, "and a… suggestion for my research, although the substance of the project was to be run at my direction. Mansfield's work during Hilary Term had concerned the metaphysical words to indicate time, both clock time and the natural rhythms of the body. He was the logical choice for a junior collaborator."

"Of course, he was," Julian said, low and quiet. "So you conducted your researches during the long vac. When no one was around."

"I have nothing to hide, Lynes," Ashburnham said, a harsh note coming into his voice for the first time. "Mansfield was hasty, impatient to see results, perhaps, but the first tests were to be conducted at the Woolwich Arsenal. Once the boy has been decently buried, they still will be. No one here has committed a crime."

The Master took a step forwards. "Perhaps not," he said, "but the damage that can be done by professional discourtesy ought not to be underestimated, in my not inconsiderable experience. Mathey – answer me one more question, if you please."

Ned inclined his head, and it seemed to Julian that the room took in a collective breath. 

"In your considered opinion, how did Mansfield die?"

It took Ned a moment to answer, his face half in shadow as he turned from the window. "Coal-gas poisoning," he said, finally, and nothing more. 

The Master nodded. "Thank you, gentlemen," he said. "Lynes, I'd be grateful if you would send that note of expenses we discussed."

It was a crisp and unarguable dismissal, and Julian wondered what might happen now, but not for long; he wanted, suddenly more than anything, to take Ned back to London with him. 

"We both will," he promised, and went out with Ned down the long winding turns of the staircase. From behind them Julian could hear the Master asking Ashburnham to stay behind a minute. He ignored it and kept on moving.

"Julian," Ned said, as they reached the outside door and stepped over the frost-tipped grass, and then nothing else.

"They'll stop it," Julian said, urgently, "they can't – not against some threat, unspecified, the damned War Office notwithstanding, they can't…"

"They will," Ned said, bleak and certain, his hands stuffed into his pockets. "They will do this."

"How do you know?" Julian asked. It took a moment for it to come to him. "What did you see?"

Before Ned said anything, a noise made them both look up. Ashburnham's footsteps rang down the staircase for a minute before the man appeared, his face washed out in the hanging lamps. "Well done," he said to Ned; whether ironically or not, Julian couldn't be sure. 

"Look," he said, lifting a hand: around them in the gaslight, something was happening. Small girls appeared from the gloom barefoot and ragged, playing and calling to each other, before vanishing; young women were sitting on the grass with punnets of fruit, laughing and showing off gowns that flashed red; old men, hatless and solemn, took coffee on the lawn; a half-dozen long-ago cats stalked for birds. They clouded the air in their multitudes, ebbing and flowing into one another, dissolving into the night air. Ned and Julian watched each haunting disappear in silence. With a final glance at each of them, Ashburnham walked away, through the mist and remains of the ghosts.

"Metaphysicians aren't generally permitted at Woolwich," Ned said, when everything was quiet and still, sounding rather lost. "Bad luck, next to all that gunpowder."

Julian only said, "Ned" – and put a hand on his shoulder for a brief moment; that, and Ned's given name given softly, were all the comfort he could offer.

*

Until, at least, they had picked their way home from Paddington through the fog of evening turning towards the small hours, let themselves in without disturbing Mrs Clewett, and Julian could take Ned by the hand and lay him down with as much gentleness as ardour.

" _Oh_ ," Ned said, and Julian felt his back arch; then Ned went limp in his arms and Julian leaned against the wall and smiled as Ned's head landed heavily on his shoulder.

"Ned, my dear," he said at length, his fingers carding through Ned's hair, "perhaps you could allow me some freedom of movement."

Ned rolled away and Julian padded across the floor in his bare feet, stepping quickly in the cold. While pouring a little water from the bedside ewer onto a cloth, he said, over his shoulder, "What was it, then?"

Ned moved sharply, pulling the bedsheets up over himself as he sat up to look at Julian; Julian took a moment to admire the fall of folds across the lines of his body. 

"Nothing," Ned said, after a few moments. 

"What did you see?" Julian asked, keeping his head turned away but glancing at Ned's reflection in the glass. The battle would be between Ned's reticence and his natural inclination, at times like these, towards a certain loose-tongued sweetness. Surprising Julian, the former won out, at least for the moment; Ned's lips were pressed firmly together as Julian clambered onto the bed beside him and passed him the cloth, to make judicious use of, and kept himself quite still, waiting.

Finally, Ned said, "You think you are more worldly, perhaps. With your friends, and your clientele, and your education in sodomy."

He used the word without affect. Julian said, "I don't understand."

"I wonder, sometimes," Ned said, still in that strange, calm voice, "if you also think that of the two of us, I am the… gentleman. The academic and metaphysician."

"There's no shame in any of those," Julian said, a little hesitantly; he couldn't say for sure what was working behind Ned's eyes, in itself a strange occurrence. "And your ability is… without question." That, he was thinking, was unshakeable: there had never been much question of where Ned's life would take him, even at thirteen, when his talent had been the only light in him, the only thing to shine apart from fear and pain and misery. 

Ned nodded, wary and calculating. "But I am a _practising_ metaphysician. I'm a member of the Commons. I deal with badly-enchanted pincushions and creaking garden gates. But when I was in the Half House, in the dark with that non-conforming thing, I would have done anything to keep it from getting out. I would have killed myself and you and everyone in a mile's radius."

Julian turned to look at him. "Yes," he said, surprised. "But you didn't."

"The readiness is all."

"Even so." Julian felt obscurely that this point was crucial. "You would have done what you had to do."

"Although," Ned said, clearly, "I am, and have been, all I am to you; though I am, in certain ways, non-conforming…"

"Ned!" Julian said, stung. "Don't say such things."

"The readiness is all: I am what might be made of me. Bring light" – and the effect of the snap enchantment was startling and sinister. Ned opened his eyes in the recreated shadow and said, "You may find, after all, that I am more dangerous than a revolver you don't ever shoot." 

Julian wanted to move forwards, to lift Ned's head to make him look up. He held back. "Ned, please tell me. What did you see?"

"Mansfield's and Ashburnham's research will be continued," Ned said, wintry and even. "I believe the Master will insist nothing of this sort ever happens at Balliol again; that's well done, and as it ought to be, but there are other places, and after him there will be others. The grammar will be smoothed and cleaned through. No more secret work in enclosed spaces; no more unfortunate accidents. What threat may come from over the water I do not know. And one day I will stand in that college quadrangle and bring something unholy down on living souls just like ourselves." 

"Ned," Julian said, thrown from words for a moment, and then: "You said, things that might be, not things that will…"

"This will."

Julian did not ask why he was so sure, nor attempt to touch him. "You saw it." 

"Yes." Ned was very calm. "Ashburnham will have taken notes on my improvements to the method, when I amended the grammar. I made a better job of it than Mansfield would have done, had he lived."

"Of course you did," Julian said, and at Ned's horrified look, shook his head.

"You misunderstand me," he said, gently. "Ned – you did what you had to do. You will do what you have to do. We don't know anything of that yet. How old might you be, when you do this? What do you know of how the world might have changed?"

"Nothing," Ned said, "save you were there" – with more thoughtfulness than misery, and Julian put a knife in that crack.

"You're no weapon," he said, soft. "Do you remember, you once laid down my hands?"

Ned said no more for a moment, but something of the tension drained from him, and he rubbed his eyes. "That," he said, sounding suddenly sleepy, "wasn't exactly lacking in self-interest. I don't think I could have borne much more, without you."

"Nor I, without you," Julian said seriously, and in his mind he was seeing a sequence of ghosts, of himself aged thirteen and eighteen and twenty-one, of spring water rising in the grass and long-ago cricket matches and narrow beds warmed with the heat of another body and trains rattling into London full of promise and of Ned, a bright-eyed constant in a world in constant flux. "You were, you are, and you will be" – this with a helplessness, this with open hands – "loved. Can you trust me in this?"

"I always have."

"Well, then," Julian said, and after a second he risked moving close enough to touch. Ned hissed at the cold of his hands and feet, which made Julian smile; he picked up a couple of chestnut shell pieces still lingering between the sheets and threw them to the floor, which got something in return – not quite a smile – from Ned. They settled down wrapped up in the sheets, and each other, for warmth. Julian was dimly aware of some sort of change in the weather. 

*

Perhaps Julian slept badly, or perhaps not quite at all, broken dreams haunted by footsteps on the stair or a carriage rattling by in the darkness. When he awoke it was still dark, and there was something in the air: something harsh and metallic, and a new ferocity to the chill. He got up briefly to fix the shutters and noted the first of the snow fluttering down, motes in the gaslight.

“Why Ned?” he asked after a while, settled into bed again, with Ned not quite asleep in his arms but almost; Julian felt his breathing quicken and then slow again, as he turned himself loose and threw an arm out across the pillows. 

“For Edward,” Julian added. “When you amended Mansfield’s maledictor, I wondered at it.”

Ned shifted slightly, eyes opening. “I don’t know. I think my father would have called me Edward. But for my mother, you know" - he shrugged, and even in the blurry darkness Julian could feel it - "I was Ned.”

Julian smiled to himself, remembering Ned had been the last of five children. “I meant in general," he said. "Why Ned – why the N?”

“I read once that it was a simple thing,” Ned said. “From ‘mine Edward’, just a little altered.”

“Mine Edward,” Julian repeated.

“Why do you ask?” Ned was a little closer to awake now, and playful. “Are you considering a study of the subject?”

“No,” Julian said, feeling sleepy himself, and grateful for Ned’s weight and warmth. “Just considering the true naming of things” – and with that metaphysician’s credo Ned was contented, quieted. When Julian sank bank into sleep he dreamt of strange things, of Ned alone on distant snow and battlefields, but when he woke again Ned was still in his arms, and the snow that had fallen overnight was quite real, God-given, unless Ned - bless him, and everything about him - had learned to make enchantments in his dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> On finishing _Death At The Dionysus Club_ , I have realised Ned does not, in fact, speak French. Mea culpa.


End file.
